2012 Hottest Year on Record
January 10, 2013
The year 2012 was the hottest on record for the contiguous United States, with an average temperature of 55.3 °F (12.9 °C), which eclipsed 1998, the previous record holder, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced this week. Temperature variations between years are usually measured in just fractions of a degree; 2012, however, was 1 full degree Fahrenheit (0.56 Celsius degree) warmer than the previous record temperature, set in 1998. In fact, the entire range between the coldest year on record, which occurred in 1917, and the previous warmest year on record, 1998, was just 4.2 Fahrenheit (2.4 Celsius) degrees.
The average 2012 springtime temperature in the lower 48 states was so far above the 20th century average–5.2 Fahrenheit (2.9 Celsius) degrees–that it set a record for the largest temperature departure for any season on record. July 2012, with an average temperature that was 3.6 Fahrenheit (2 Celsius) degrees above average, was the hottest month ever recorded in the contiguous United States.
Shades of red on the map indicate temperatures up to 8 Fahrenheit degrees warmer than average. Shades of blue indicate temperatures up to 8 Fahrenheit degrees cooler than average. The darker the color, the larger the difference from average temperature. (NOAA Climate.gov)
According to an unofficial count maintained by the Weather Channel, 34,008 new daily high records were set at weather stations in the United States in 2012, compared with only 6,664 new daily record lows. Fully 61 percent of the nation was engulfed in drought in 2012. In addition, with 11 natural disasters that exceeded a $1-billion damage threshold, 2012 turned out to be the second-worst year on record on the Climate Extremes Index, surpassed, again, only by 1998.
“Climate change has had a role in this [record],” noted Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, North Carolina. Crouch stated his belief that it is unlikely such a record would have occurred without the long-term warming trend caused in large part by emissions of greenhouse gases.
Additional World Book articles:
- Climate
- National Weather Service
- Weather
- Weather 1998 (a Back in Time article)
